How does a good cop turn bad? For Ruben Palomares, a former corrupt LAPD Rampart division officer, the process was slow. He went from receiving LAPD’s highest honor to becoming one of the most corrupt cops in US history.

 

Officer Palomares’ story begins with his first undercover assignment. In the late 1980s there was this show called 21 Jump Street. Johnny Depp starred in it. It was about undercover cops, who pretended to be students, in order to bust drug dealers in schools.

 

But did you know that back in the 1994, the Los Angeles police department juvenile narcotics unit actually recruited young officers to infiltrate classrooms in order to investigate drug dealers? They couldn’t just get any cop to fill this undercover role. They needed a fresh face who could blend in with the students. So, they approached officer Ruben Palomares.

 

In 1995, Ruben Palomares got transferred to LAPD’s Rampart Division where he continued to work undercover cases. He was specifically assigned to the anti-gang unit called CRASH. CRASH is an acronym for the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums. This is when Ruben’s fate will be decided.

 

For the first four years, during his time at the Rampart Division, his superiors described him as a leader with a reputation for excellence. But Ruben was committed to cleaning up his neighborhood—and he was willing to use his authority to do so.

 

That’s when the suspicious shootings started to happen, then the robberies, and before anyone even noticed, he was wrapped up with the same officers suspected of orchestrating the assassination of The Notorious B.I.G.

 

Today’s story is a collaboration with my good friend Chris Knittel from the Burner Phone Podcast. Burner Phone is a collection of intimate conversations with former criminals. Chris is a documentarian whose work has been seen on VICE, Netflix, A&E and NatGeo.

 

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Theme Music composed by Joe Basile from The Chicken Music and Sound Design. Find out more about Joe and The Chicken at www.thechicken.net

 

 

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